Following threats against Kathy Sierra, Robert Scoble has taken the week off blogging because, in his own words, he is “totally freaked out”.
I’ve given a fair bit of thought to the situation, and no matter what I write Robert Scoble will blubber on about how I’m out to get him because I disagree with him on a handful of things because he subscribes to the “all or nothing” school of support (was it Bush who said you are either with us, or against us?), but here’s my 2 cents worth.
Robert Scoble is a chicken.
And maybe even French :-)
What sort of message does running away and being silent give to those people who threaten others?
Answer: it tells them that by making threats they silence others.
For memory it was British Prime Minister Edward Heath that returned Palestinian Hijackers in the 70’s that lead to the rash of plane hijackings in that decade. Heath’s message to the terrorists: we’ll let you go, it’s ok to hijack planes.
Scoble is delivering a similar sort of message, that making threats against people you disagree with in an attempt to silence them results in a positive outcome for those making the threats: silence.
Our forefathers, at least in the Western world, died fighting for our freedoms, freedom of speech being one of the most important tenets of western democracies.
And yet Scoble is decided to be silent, based from what I can gather is not death threats to himself (although he may have received personal death threats, I simply don’t know) but threats to someone else.
Scoble’s position in the blogosphere means that others look up to him, and listen to what he says. If he was a true champion of free speech and the blogosphere he would DOUBLE his level of posting, not stop posting, because the message he would be sending to those who seek to silence others is that they will never be victorious, that they can never silence free speech, and that the good citizens of the blogosphere will win the day.
“All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.”
Edmund Burke.
Update: Ethan Kaplan has an excellent post on the entire situation. So good it was enough for me to add him to my daily read + follow him on Twitter, if only I was that articulate. Recommended.
Tags: Robert Scoble
Originally posted on March 26, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
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